Kuchiba Hiro zipped up his bag; the soft rasp sounded unnaturally loud in the hushed classroom. Ignoring the mixture of fear, awe, and monster-seeing stares from his classmates, he rose without expression and walked toward the door.
His face was a polished mask, carved from birth with aloofness and frost—no ripple ever showed.
He moved down the half-empty corridor and descended the stairs in measured, almost mechanical steps.
Just outside the building he collided head-on with another group leaving the Service Club room.
Both parties stopped dead.
Facing him were Hiratsuka Shizuka, Hachiman Hikigaya, Yukinoshita Yukino, and Yui Yuigahama.
Yukinoshita Yukino reacted first: like a startled cat she stiffened, half-stepped back, a flicker of dread racing through her ice-blue eyes. In her mind this boy was more terrifying than any silver-screen slasher.
Even Hikigaya's dead-fish eyes twitched; his Adam's apple bobbed as he shifted into a faint defensive stance.
Yui Yuigahama yelped and ducked behind Hiratsuka, peering out with one frightened eye.
Kuchiba's gaze swept them calmly, and when it landed on the living, breathing Hiratsuka, a minuscule patch of ice inside him cracked—an almost imperceptible ripple of relief.
But the tremor was too slight to break the glacier of his expression; nothing showed.
No one watching that light screen could feel it more keenly than the "protagonist" himself. The memory of killing a teacher who cared for him, and the hollow loneliness that followed, ached even through the pixels.
No one noticed. To Hiratsuka the brat still looked infuriatingly indifferent.
"Ku—chi—ba—Hi—ro!"
Hiratsuka's fury detonated. She roared his full name, strode forward, grabbed his collar, and shook him like a rag doll.
"You little bastard! No conscience! You'd kill even me?! Is that what those damned books taught you?! Where's your honor, your humanity?! You slaughter the innocent—" She sputtered, chest heaving.
He let her shake him, swayed slightly, and answered with an old line: "When the nest is overturned, no egg stays unbroken."
She understood the proverb; it only made her angrier.
"Don't quote classics at me!" she snarled. "Those officers were following orders! Fine—call it karma if you want! But Hikigaya? That idiot who ran out—what was his crime? What 'nest' was he? He's just a stupid kid!"
Kuchiba paused, then said in a flat tone, "He was stupid. So are you."
She raised a fist to slug him, but at the sight of his unflinching, matter-of-fact face, she couldn't bring it down. She settled for more furious scolding.
Again she tried to inject her creed—justice, morals, friendship, the weight of life, the price of impulse—while he listened with the usual blank detachment, her words sliding in one ear and out the other.
Their worldviews never overlapped; to him her ideals were beautiful but greenhouse-fragile, useless in true wilds.
Yet he was no emotionless shell. He knew her tirade was rooted in pure, clumsy kindness. He respected her for being, in the truest sense, a good person.
While she ranted, Kuchiba lifted his eyes to her flushed face and, earnest and awkward, said: "I'm glad you're alive."
Hiratsuka's lecture froze mid-word; the trio behind her gaped.
The statement was so sudden it sounded almost like a confession.
Color flooded her cheeks; she stammered, "W-what do you mean, saying that all of a sudden?"
Oblivious to any double meaning, he explained dully, "No special meaning. Dying like in the light screen would be bad. I'm relieved it didn't happen."
He paused, his gaze sharpening with rare earnestness. "Teacher, don't be foolish. Don't decide others' fates, and don't meddle in things that will get you killed. I truly don't want you to die for someone else's sake."
His eyes slid past her to the pale Yukinoshita. "Know your limits," he warned, voice low and heavy. "The storm around your father is beyond you. Run. It's the smartest—maybe the only—option."
He straightened his collar, stepped around them, and walked away without a backward glance.
Hiratsuka stood clutching her burning cheeks while Yukinoshita pressed her lips together, eyes shining with hurt, humiliation, and the cold grip of dread.